Hoping for "Old Hollywood Glamour Lips" - 4mm Top and Bottom- No More Vanishing Top Lip. - Westerville, Ohio

Two years ago I went for Juvederm to fill in my parenthesis lines. The doctor had a little more left (half of one syringe) and suggested a large impact could be made if we put it in my upper lip. I never had obsessed about my small upper lip before that, but once I saw it bigger I realized I LOVED the look. I never wanted a small upper lip again. It made me look so much prettier to have a lip that did not vanish when I smiled, and so the following year I got another half syringe.

Now, it is expensive to maintain my Botox, my Voluma, and my Juvederm upper lip, so when I heard about Permalip as a permanent solution, I researched it for probably 1 and a half years on Real Self, youtube, and elsewhere. Finally this February I went to a consultation with a well-reviewed Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Robert Houser, who performs the Permalip procedure in Ohio. His office is over a 2 hour drive for me, but that is not so bad! I can tell he is highly skilled, confident, and has a great personality. He showed me some other ladies in his office who had the procedure, and it was so nice. I couldn't tell anything had been done to their lips... very natural!

Now it is March, and I just put down my $500 deposit to officially book my date which will be April 18. I am SO excited! I have planned to fly to Florida the day after the procedure, and recover there for 7 days before coming back to Ohio and returning to work and the public. I am a little anxious about how I will look to people at the air port and such the day after my procedure, but I will wear a surgical mask and hopefully people will just assume I'm a germ-phoebe.

The plastic surgeon is going to give me 5mm in the upper lip. The deal is buy one get one free, so even though my lower lip is full, I am going for a 4mm on the bottom. I seriously can't wait!

When I first went to the consultation, I was so excited about the notion of having a bigger top lip that I gravitated to Large (5mm). But as my procedure date approaches in less than a week I am 100% certain that I am going to do a 4mm, as it will be more appropriate for the thin lip I am starting out with. I decided this because
1.) All of the lips on Real Self that are similar to my before, and who's lips I love in the "afters", have gone with 4mm. (For example the permalip reviewers "ega3" and "KateFD", "giada" among others.)
2.) I read a medical evaluation of Permalip called "Five-year Experience with Perma Facial Implant by Peter Raphael, MD, Ryan Harris, BA, and Scott W. Harris, MD" and it states in this review of 832 Permalip patients, 78% chose 4mm (most used!), 13% chose 5mm, and 9% chose 3mm. It said 5mm " were mainly used in removal and replacements when patients requested additional volume", as opposed to being the implant placed initially.
Additionally the medical paper stated "Regarding implant girth (SIZE in mm), overaugmenting is relatively more common and noticeable. It tends to produce a tight appearance, a horizontal shadow, or perivermilion bulging depending on the angle of view. We term this phenomenon “ridging”... In addition to this, the paper goes on to say "We have thus learned to avoid 5-mm implants as primary treatments. Starting with 4 mm ones (3 mm if the lip looks too thin) allows adequate tissue expansion for eventual 5 mm placement."
Reading this paper made me even more sure I want 4mm!
3.) I saw several people on the internet who went with 5mm, when their lip was not very substantial to begin with, and it looked like it distorted the cupids bow, elongated the lips into sausages, and gave a "plastic surgery" look. I think 5mm works best for ladies who already being with full-ish lips. In my before you see just how thin my lip is, and I just KNOW a 5mm would look odd in it.
In conclusion, I am very excited and looking forward to 4mm. I think it will be subtle, it will keep the shape I am used to, and it will still provide an enhancement. In my case, I do not have the goal of large lips, but of a more balanced top lip. I hope if you are in the same boat I am in, this will help you a bit, but of course it is a unique situation for each person based on their lip tissue and goals.

Here are some photos of me today, with half a syringe Juvederm still in my UPPER LIP ONLY, last injected October 26 2015 (ten months ago). It is clear to see that my juvederm does in fact still give the upper lip some boost, as opposed to the photos I posted of when I had NO juvederm. I will use these as kind of my true before photos, so after tomorrow's procedure I can compare.